Supply side, not ‘trickle down’

Re “‘Trickle down’ theory’s broken premise,” column, Aug. 20

I totally agree with David Lazarus that “trickle down” theory is a “massive hoax” — by the left. Economists have not advocated anything called “trickle down,” a straw-man term Lazarus obviously enjoys.

What so-called supplyside theory suggests is that lowering taxes on the rich encourages them to invest in the economy instead of tax shelters, and in so doing, it actually increases revenues and stimulates job growth. This it has done fairly consistently, with varying results.

What sabotages the theory is runaway spending, a consequence that has frustrated practitioners from Woodrow Wilson to Donald Trump. Supply-side actually works pretty well, all things considered. Patrick M. Dempsey

Granada Hills

The Presidential Medal of Freedom for supply-side economist Arthur Laffer is both a joke and a travesty. One can only hope that the award will be put into proper perspective when the reprehensible Trump administration crashes and burns into the ignominy it so richly deserves.

If there is any karmic justice in the world, in the future the serendipitous homonymic aspect of Laffer’s surname will provide us with an idiom to describe all devious or crackpot economic theories. Each and every one will be summarily dismissed as “a real Laffer.” Robert Michael LaCarr

Los Angeles

Lazarus cites a report on high pay for chief executives.

CEO pay is a convenient target for critics but is relatively unimportant in the overall scheme of things. If all those CEOs worked for free and had their pay distributed equally, how much more would the average employee receive? Gerry Swider

Sherman Oaks